Lee James Nestor
Computer Engineer, Mathematician
Design Portfolio
Figure 1: NeRF Rendering of HVAC System Figure 2: CAD Model of a Mining Robot Figure 3: Recreation of XMB Home Screen Figure 4: Particle Simulation of bodies about a black
hole
About me
I’m an engineer and mathematician whose passions range from Computer
Architectures to Relativistic Physics. I have experience with embedded systems
such as Microcontrollers, Single Board Computers, and FPGAs. I have worked
with a wide plethora of programming languages such as C, C++, Python, Matlab,
and more. I have also done work with mathematical modeling, numerical system
simulation and analysis.
Engineering Work and Designs
Autonomous Photogrammetric
Data Collection and Analyzation
●Problem
○Structural Damage or Environmental Hazard
making the area unsafe for human
investigation
●Solution
○Navigation using conventional Simultaneous
Localization and Mapping Techniques
○Photogrammetric Data Processing with AI,
using Neural Radiance Fields or (NeRF)
combined with COLMAP (Structure-from-
Motion and Multi-View Stereo REconstruction)
○Analyzation of the generated model using
simple Finite Element Analysis (FEA) for
Structural Integrity
●Source
○https://github.com/colmap/colmap
○https://github.com/NVlabs/instant-ngp
Figure 5: NeRF Rendering Text on a Coke-a-
Cola Can
Figure 6: NeRF Rendering reflective surface on a Coke-a-Cola
Can
Figure 7: Matlab display of an STL Model
Figure 8: NeRF rendering of an HVAC System
Figure 9: FEA of a cube with pressure applied Figure 10: COLMap Program with generated
camera positions and angles
Autonomous Damage and
Structure Scanning Drone
●Problem
○Structural Damage or Environmental Hazard
making the area unsafe for human investigation
●Solution
○Development and design of a quadcopter drone
○Navigation using an embedded system featuring a
Raspberry Pi 3b+ SBC and a Mateksys F405-VTOL
working together with Ardupilot firmware
○Data collection with an on-board camera and
installed LiDAR for positional sensing
○Implemented network for data transmission back
to a base computer for processing and manual
drone control
○Base program for receiving this data and
presenting it to the user
●Source
○https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot
Figure 11: Picture of the flight controller and connected motors taken with the
on board camera
Figure 12: Complete prototype drone
Figure 13: Block Diagram of the Hardware structure
Figure 14: Block diagram the data processing
system
Figure 16: User Interface
Figure 15: Ardupilot autopilot route for around an
University building
The University of Akron NASA
Robotics Team Software
●Problem
○To construct a robot to autonomously navigate an
arena simulating the surface of the moon and
proceed to dig soil and deposit to construct a
berm
●Solution
○Development of a wireless and robust
communications network for controlling the robot
○Development of an embedded system, here a
Jetson Nano, to interface with the wireless
controller and the electrical components of the
robot
○Analysis of the design requirements to properly
create the software to work within
○Research and development into autonomous
systems and mapping techniques using Robotic
Operating System or ROS
●Source
○https://github.com/UA-NASA-Robotics
○https://github.com/ros/ros
Figure 17: CAD Rendering of UA NASA Robotics Mining Team
2023-2024 Robot, Software written by Software Team
Figure 18: Team members
carrying the robot for testing
Figure 19: Planned routing for navigating the arena
Figure 20: CAD Rendering of UA
NASA Robotics Mining Team 2022-
2023 Robot, software written by
Lee Nestor
Figure 21: Jetson Nano SBC
Figure 22: Robotic Operating System used for
governing autonomy
The University of Akron NASA
Robotics Team Software Head
Lead
●Problem
○Managing and coordination of a team of 20+
people while also engaging them and properly
utilizing their time
●Solution
○Regular stand-up meetings for coordination and
re-alignment of goals and development processes
○Team meetings for group organization and
presentation of current status
○Development of extensive documentation and
employment of software engineering techniques
○Using github and setting up a system for team
members to be kept aware of the current projects
and their potential difficulty
●Source
○https://github.com/UA-NASA-Robotics
○https://github.com/orgs/UA-NASA-
Robotics/projects?query=is%3Aopen
Figure 23: Electrical/Software
Members Soldering Figure 24: Software Member
working on SBC Figure 25: Software Team photo
Figure 26: Github project organization
Figure 27: Team
Members
transporting the
Robot
Figure 28: University of Akron NASA Robotics Mining Team Github PAge
Custom Playstation 3 Inspired
Webpage
●Problem
○There is a need for a homepage for web browsing
that has quick access for a wide variety of links
while also presenting relevant information
●Solution
○Utilizing HTML, CSS and JS to design an
implement a web page that can incorporate all of
these requirements
○Use the Playstation 3 home screen as inspiration
for a way to organize and present different links
○Allow the icons to expand with user input such as
a mouse hover
●Source
○https://github.com/LeeJamesNestorAkron/Playst
ation3StartPage
Figure 29: Screenshot of the startpage, written in HTML, CSS, and JS
Figure 30: Weather data pulled from the internet
Figure 31: Original home
screen the design is based off
of
Figure 32: Icon hovered over
with mouse cursor presents
clickable links
Figure 33: Time, Data, and Weather data presented
Schwarzschild Metric Based
Black Hole Simulation
●Problem
○A lack of understanding of general relativistic effects
around a black hole, or an object whose Schwarzschild
Radius is outside its physical body
●Solution
○Develop and design a numerical simulation to solve
and display a particle affected by a black hole
○Derive and understand Schwarzschild geodesics in
order to create a set of differential equations to solve
numerically
○Implement an 4th order Runge-Kutta numerical solver
to evaluate the system of equations
○Display and render the particles using OpenGL
rendering
●Source
○https://github.com/LeeJamesNestorAkron/schwarzchil
dBlackhole
○https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_geodesics
Figure 34: Example simulation of large mass particles
orbiting a black hole
Figure 35: Second example of large mass particles orbiting a
black hole
Figure 36: Python Implementation of a Runge-Kutta 4th Solver
Figure 37: Python Implementation of Schwarzschild
geodesic equations
